Enduring the Worst

The tornado that struck Tyler, Minnesota, August 21, 1918 destroyed most of the city's buildings, MHS Collections (Negative No. 90668).

Part of being a Minnesotan means coping with the weather at its most dramatic extremes. Blizzards and heat waves, floods and droughts, tornadoes and fires have regularly crisscrossed our landscape, leaving their survivors to pick up the pieces of their lives. These weather disasters remind us that our world is still governed by the elemental forces of nature.